Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  I don’t know how it happened, but I heard Major Williams telling us that the Germans were assaulting the trench. I was paralyzed for a second without knowing what to do. Ben shook me by the arm and told me to fix my bayonet.

  “The Nazis are going to know what a Palestinian is worth!” he said to encourage me.

  And then I saw him. He seemed to be older than I was. His gaze was cold, his face was angry, he seemed keen to kill me. It took me a moment to react, maybe no more than a fraction of a second, but enough time for him to have killed me. I was lucky. Survival in war is sometimes a question of luck. The soldier stumbled and I took the opportunity to plunge my bayonet into his stomach. He fell down in front of me, twisting in pain, and tried with one final effort to stick me with his bayonet. I kicked his gun out of the way; it fell to the ground and was quickly lost in the mud. The second man I killed did not catch me unprepared, I shot him at point-blank range, as I did with the two or three subsequent ones, until I lost all notion of time.

  Then I felt someone grabbing me and telling me to stop. David was shaking me and trying to bring me back to reality.

  “Stop it, the man’s already dead!” he shouted at me, as I stuck my bayonet again and again into the body of a soldier who seemed to be looking at me in surprise.

  “Did we win?” I asked, as if this were some children’s fight.

  “I think so, we’re still in the trench. The colonel has ordered us to get rid of all this, or soon we won’t be able to stand the smell of the corpses.”

  The next days were like the first. They attacked us. We resisted. We killed. We died. You get accustomed to the routine and you stop thinking. The only thing you have to do is kill so as not to die, and you direct all your senses toward that end.

  A month after entering this hell, Major Williams asked for volunteers for a mission “behind enemy lines.” “I need someone who can speak French and German.” David and I volunteered. David was German but he had studied French at school and could get by fairly easily; as for me, I spoke French like a Parisian and Paula had taught me enough German for me to make myself pretty well understood.

  “We have to go to Belgium to find a member of the Resistance who is hiding on a farm. He has important information. High Command wants him alive.”

  He explained the details of the mission. Three men would go, under Major Williams’s command: David Rosen, a corporal named Tony Smith, and me. We got rid of our uniforms and dressed in civilian clothes. The major explained that if German soldiers stopped us they would shoot us for being spies.

  “If we were in uniform, we might be lucky and get taken to a prisoner-of-war camp, but we have to go dressed like natives so as not to attract any attention. We will only have pistols and a couple of grenades each.”

  We waited until the Meteorological Service told us that we might expect a dark and moonless night. Although we held our line against the Germans, Major Williams thought that they were retreating a little, but the skirmishes still took place fairly often.

  We dragged ourselves through the mud for I don’t know how long, trying to make no noise so as not to be heard by the Germans. We didn’t lift our heads until Major Williams gave the signal. Then we stood up and grouped ourselves around him.

  “We have to walk seven miles to get to the farm. The Intelligence Service assures us that it’s uninhabited. We’ll wait there until someone comes to pick us up. Once we are in contact with the Resistance we’ll go to the collection point, which they say is about fifteen miles from the farm. We’ll wait there until they bring us the Resistance member. Once we’ve got the ‘package,’ we’ll come out. Any questions?”

  There was nothing to ask, so we got to our feet and started to march, careful not to make the slightest noise. It was a dark night, with no moon at all. The thick woods were our ally. Even so, I started whenever I heard the slightest noise, thinking that the Germans would find us at any moment. We had agreed that in case we were stopped it would be Rosen who would talk. After all, he was German. Corporal Smith’s father was as well, but his mother was from Bath and he had been born in England and had never left there, so although he spoke good German, his accent might give him away.

  The first few miles went by without any problems. We got to the farm just as the shadows of night were lifting. It seemed to me very pretentious to call this place a farm—it didn’t even have a roof. Williams told us to rest while he waited for the arrival of our guide. He would take the first watch.

  I couldn’t sleep. I was too tense even to try. I would have killed for a cigarette, but smoking was the last thing I could do. We waited patiently all day. Tony saw a German platoon with his binoculars. We thought the worst, that they were coming to the farm, but they walked right past.

  The hours dragged unbearably. We were impatient, although we said nothing. Only David Rosen dared to ask openly what would happen if no one came to find us.

  We waited another day, and when night fell we heard some light footsteps approaching. It was my turn to be on watch, although I suspect that my companions were as awake as I was.

  My pistol was prepared with the silencer ready, and I remained on the alert until the person who was approaching made himself visible. He was an elderly man, who I think must have been nearly seventy, but he moved extremely lightly. He raised his arms as he came closer and I left my hiding place. I asked him in German who he was and he replied with the agreed-upon countersign: “I don’t know if it will snow.”

  Major Williams came out of the shadows and asked the man to come closer.

  “I met a couple of patrols not far from here. They didn’t see me, but we’ll need to be careful. Are you ready?”

  We said yes, eager to get going.

  “I’ve been walking for a long way, I need to rest for a couple of hours; it’ll be pitch black by then and we’ll run less risk of being seen.”

  He dropped into a corner and fell asleep. We let him sleep. Two hours later the man opened his eyes and we set off.

  We had to avoid four German patrols. One of them was about to discover us because a soldier was lagging behind. Tony trod on a branch and it sounded like a clap of thunder. The German went on the alert and started to hunt around in the dark, but he didn’t find us. The major made us stay still and silent for a long time after the patrol had gone by.

  Five miles later, dawn was starting to break and we were exhausted. The man who served as our guide said to Major Williams that we needed to pause to recover our strength and eat something. We went into a grove in the woods that seemed far enough away from prying eyes.

  We still had a few miles to go, but the guide decided that we would rest until nightfall. He fell asleep straight away, and we watched over him, Tony and I taking the first watch, the major and David the second.

  When we were about to set off again it started to rain and the last few miles turned into a nightmare.

  It was still night when we reached a farm. The guide gave us a sign to hide among the trees while he went over to see that everything was in order. We saw him walking directly and decidedly toward the farmhouse and pushing open the door. I don’t know how long it took for him to come out again, but those minutes seemed like an eternity to us. He waved to us to come closer and we did so, cautiously.

  “They’re from the Resistance,” he said, pointing at a middle-aged couple.

  The woman offered us some food, soup and stewed rabbit, and let us dry our clothes in front of the fire. Her husband explained that the person we were meant to take with us had not yet arrived.

  “And where is he?” Major Williams asked. There was a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  “I don’t know. All we know is that a person will come to our farm and that the British will pick him up. That’s all I was told and I don’t need to know any more. The less we know, the better for everyone; if we fall into the hands of the Gestapo, they’ll m
ake us confess.”

  Although the woman did all she could to make us feel comfortable, we were very tense, worried that the person we were waiting for was late. Our guide seemed fairly calm, on the other hand.

  “Do you think it’s easy to get here from Germany? A thousand obstacles could have sprung up. My orders are to wait here for two days and if the ‘package’ doesn’t turn up then I’m to take you back to where you came from.”

  “But if the Germans have got the ‘package,’ they could come here at any moment,” Corporal Smith replied.

  “We’ll kill a few of them before they kill us,” David Rosen said with a smile, sure that he would turn his words into actions.

  We didn’t have to wait for two days, only until the next morning. I was relaxing in an upstairs room when I heard footsteps approaching and some people whispering. When I came downstairs I found a couple of young men and an elderly woman. How old might she be? Sixty, perhaps, but I remember her as an old woman, fat and not very attractive.

  She presented herself as Fräulein Adeline. The two young men who were with her seemed to be exhausted, more so than she was, and each accepted gladly a cup of tea and a piece of cake.

  Major Williams didn’t think it odd that the “package” had turned out to be a woman. I did, but I said nothing, and David Rosen, Tony Smith, and I all looked at her with interest.

  “They won’t realize I have disappeared until tomorrow, Monday. I left the office on Thursday saying that I was feeling ill.”

  “When will they start looking for you?” Major Williams asked.

  “I suppose more or less in the middle of the morning. My colleague will be worried about my absence and will call my home. I live alone, so if there’s no answer they’ll think that I’ve gotten worse. My house is not so far from the office, so she’ll come round as soon as she can, and when she finds she can’t open the door, I suppose she’ll talk to the porter, and then . . .”

  “So we have a few hours’ head start,” the Major muttered.

  “And a cattle truck waiting to take you as close as possible to the border along an old landing strip, which is where I suppose they’ll pick you up in twelve hours’ time,” our guide said.

  “How did you get here?” Tony Smith asked, in spite of the disapproving gaze of the major.

  “In a car, we changed vehicles four times,” one of the young men said.

  “The sooner we get started, the better,” the other one added.

  “We’re not far from the landing strip, if we go now we’ll be out in the open for too long,” Major Williams replied.

  “That’s a risk you’ll have to take. These people have done their bit,” the guide said, pointing to the farmers.

  Major Williams didn’t contradict him, and when Fräulein Adeline and her companions were ready, we got as comfortable as we could in an old sheep wagon. The animals greeted us with bleating, and seemed upset at our intrusion, but eventually they made a space for us.

  I couldn’t stop looking at Fräulein Adeline. I could not imagine how this woman might be important for the Secret Service and I wanted to ask Major Williams, but I repressed my curiosity.

  We met a column of tanks. The young man who was driving pulled over to let them pass and he and our guide, who was in the front seat with him, waved enthusiastically at them. We stayed silent among the sheep, with our pistols cocked and ready, although we knew that we did not have any chance against them. But on that day God was on our side; the German soldiers didn’t even ask where our truck was going.

  When we got to the old landing strip, there were two other men waiting for us, ready to summon the airplane that was to pick us up as soon as the radio told them to. I don’t think any of us breathed easily until we were inside the plane and well up in the air. If Fräulein Adeline were trying to surprise us even more, then she succeeded: She fell asleep in the plane, as if she were coming back from a day trip.

  I never knew who the woman was, nor where she worked, nor what she knew or what she had that was so important for the Secret Service. When I asked Major Williams he told me that I didn’t need to know. I didn’t insist.

  When I got back to France, Major Williams made me an offer before I rejoined my battalion.

  “Would you like to work with me? You know what I do now.”

  I said I would have to think about it.

  It was seductive, the idea of working behind enemy lines, but I didn’t know if I wanted to spend the whole war carrying out missions I didn’t understand.

  I was also surprised that Major Williams would trust me. I was only nineteen years old, and although the months of fighting had turned me into a man, I did not have the experience or the training to be able to go on intelligence missions.

  “Tell me, Major, why do you want me to work for you?” I plucked up the courage to ask at this interview.

  “I think you have the necessary qualities. You don’t get nervous, you think things through, you don’t want to be a hero, you only want to do what you have to do, and also because of your appearance—you don’t attract anyone’s attention. You’re not too tall or too short, you’re not thin, you’re not fat, your hair is brown and you have a body shape that could be a Frenchman’s, or a German’s, or an Englishman’s. You have a great advantage for this kind of mission, which is that you can pass unnoticed.”

  “Like you.”

  “Yes, like me.”

  “I’m not sure that I want to spend the war going on special missions.”

  “I thought that you had already made up your mind.”

  “You haven’t given me time to think.”

  “Time? You want time? Where do you think you are? This is war, it’s us or them, and we don’t even have time to catch our breath.”

  I looked straight at him. Neither of us blinked, I suppose he was more certain of my reply than I was myself.

  “We’ve lost contact with one of our agents in France. A plane will take you there. You’ll find out what’s happened and come back.”

  “Easy as that?” I knew that the question annoyed Major Williams.

  “I’m sure it will be easy for you,” he replied sarcastically.

  It would not be my last mission. I went on two more after that.

  When I came back from my last trip behind enemy lines I asked to be reincorporated into my battalion.

  I stood up while I gave my report and as always they asked me to give them every last detail. I was asked the same question again and again, and always gave the same answer. It was a part of the routine.

  “Go back to the front,” they said when they were satisfied with what I had told them.

  “Sir, I want to join the Jewish Brigade, I know that it’s open to volunteers from different units.”

  The major stood in silence weighing up my request.

  “Yes, you’ll be better off with your own people.”

  A few days later I was in the north of Italy, in Tarvisio, on the border with Yugoslavia and Austria. It was here that some of the last battles took place before the end of the war. The front was at Cervia, where other regiments as well as our brigade had been sent.

  Ben had joined the Jewish Brigade earlier than I had, and was waiting impatiently for me, as was David Rosen.

  “There are Jews from everywhere in the brigade, not just from Palestine,” Ben explained.

  “General Ernest Benjamin is a good soldier and he’s a Jew. He was in the Royal Engineers,” David added.

  A lot of the men who were in the brigade had already fought in other British units, so our new companions-in-arms were not novices.

  When we had a moment alone, I told Ben of all that had happened since Major Williams had asked me to work under him.

  Ben agreed with me that the best way to fight the Nazis was at the front.

  “I don’t know how this wil
l be, but we had our baptism of fire in Caen, so I don’t imagine it will be any worse,” I said with conviction.

  David Rosen, always smiling and optimistic, added:

  “Well, and it’s nearly spring.”

  He was right, although in those first days of March 1945 I had not even thought about which season it was.

  The Jewish Brigade was deployed in the area between Mazzano and Alfonsine, an odd place with little canals and dozens of farms, some in the middle of no-man’s-land.

  The enemy lines were well defended. Our major told us that the German soldiers were under the orders of General Reinhard, a very experienced soldier.

  If we had thought that Caen was hellish, this place was no better.

  We thought this especially after the catastrophe of Fosso Vecchio, which we barely managed to escape from with our lives. We had to protect ourselves from the mines that were scattered all over the ground, the traps that the Germans had planted on some of the many little farms, and the continuous mortar fire.

  David Rosen had trained as a sapper and Ben and I held our breaths whenever he went off to find those lethal hidden bombs.

  We killed, knowing that at any moment it could be us who died. In La Giorgetta we fought with our bayonets, face to face, and in moments like that the only important thing is to live, so you stop seeing the other soldier as a human being and this brutalizes you and removes all that remains of your humanity. After every skirmish, after every battle, I felt a void in my gut, I felt disgusted with myself for having lost, for the duration of the conflict, the knowledge that the combatant in front of me was another man like I was.

  “It’s not that you forget, it’s just that you have no choice, it’s his life or yours,” Ben tried to console me, although I knew he also felt anguished every time he killed a man.

  We also fought near Brisighella. The orders were to take control of both banks of the Senio River. The Germans were on one side, we were on the other. We faced to the Fourth Parachute Division under General Heinrich Trettner. Trettner’s soldiers were well trained.